Archive for October 25th, 2010

As Robert S. Mueller III completes the final year of his ten-year term as the Director of the FBI, President Barack Obama and the United States Senate will have the critically important responsibility of nominating and confirming his successor.

This selection process should be devoid of the political posturing and gamesmanship that has surrounded the recent appointments of key government leaders and judges – but can only be so if the participants fully understand why the role of FBI Director is significantly different from other leadership positions.

While the FBI Director is not a political persona, the man or woman in this job exercises tremendous influence on international law enforcement issues and leaders.

The Director frequently makes crucial decisions on matters of national security and federal criminal investigations. He or she must be free to make decisions without fear of political consequences – especially in those cases involving public officials.

The FBI first took interest in the late Sen. Paul Wellstone when he was arrested during an anti-Vietnam war protest in 1970, and years later investigated death threats against him as a liberal Democratic senator, according to Minnesota Public Radio, which obtained FBI files under a Freedom of Information request.

MPR reported that Wellstone, who died in a plane crash in 2002, started getting death threats after he unseated incumbent Republican Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, but no one was ever charged. Wellstone opposed the first gulf war.

The FBI also investigated the plane crash in 2002, but found no evidence of criminal activity, MPR reported.

ORLANDO — A nostalgic Robert S. Mueller III addressed the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference (IACP) here on Monday for the last time as FBI director as he finishes up his 10 year term, which ends next fall.

“My first IACP conference took place seven weeks after September 11th,” Mueller told the crowd. “There was much discussion that year about whether to even hold a conference. Many of you did not want to leave your departments in a time of crisis.

“In the end, you chose not to allow the events of that day to stop you from doing what needed to be done,” he said.

“In the past nine years, we have gone about our business in new ways, with new partners. And we are all better and stronger for it.”

Mueller went on to discuss the threats of terrorism — threats from al Qaeda and its affiliates “from the attempted Christmas Day bombing by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to the failed Times Square bombing by TTP, a militant group in Pakistan.”

And he emphasized the increasing importance of cooperation among law enforcement in the states and internationally.

Mueller closed by saying : “This is my final IACP Conference as Director of the FBI, and with that comes a degree of nostalgia.”

“Today, we all understand that the foundation of our partnership rests not only on training, task forces, and technology, but on friendship and trust…on our willingness to pick up the phone, walk across the hall, or meet after work for a beer or a glass of wine.”

And we know that this foundation of friendship will outlast any Director, any police chief, any agent, and any officer.”

Investigators are looking at an imprisoned serial killer and former FBI informant as a possible suspect in the 2001 murder of Seattle federal prosecutor Tom Wales, the Boulder Daily Camera reports.

Wales, 49, and a father of two, was sitting in front of his computer in the basement of his home on Oct. 11, 2001 when he was shot and killed by someone in his backyard, the Camera reported. For quite some time, authorities have been focusing on a Seattle businessman whom Wales unsuccessfully prosecuted.

Authorities are now looking at serial killer Scott Kimball, 44, who spent time in Seattle and told the FBI months and years after the killing that he had information about the case, the Camera reported. Kimball was sentenced last year to 70 years in prison for killing his uncle and three Colorado women in 2003 and 2004, the paper reported. He is also a suspect in other murders.

A Tennessee White Supremacist who planned to go on a killing spree of African-Americans and kill Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidency is off to prison for 14 years.

Daniel Cowart, 22, of Bells, Tenn. was sentenced Friday in Tennessee after he pleaded guilty earlier in the year to a host of charges including conspiracy, threatening to kill and inflict bodily harm upon a major candidate for the office of President of the United States, interstate transportation of a short-barreled shotgun and interstate transportation of a firearm for the purpose of committing a felony, the Justice Department said.

Cowart admitted to conspiring with Paul Schlesselman of West Helena, Ark., to go on the killing spree. Schlesselman was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“Threats of violence fueled by bigotry and hate have no place in the United States of America, and they will not be tolerated,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “Although the heroic intervention of law enforcement spared us from a tragedy, this conspiracy and its associated crimes demanded a severe sentence. The sentence imposed constitutes serious punishment for a serious crime.”

Granting a request by the Obama administration, the Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether former Atty. Gen. John Aschroft can be sued by a U.S. citizen who says he was wrongly arrested as a material witness.

Rather than reflexively protecting a former government official, the justices should pay close attention to an appeals court opinion explaining why Ashcroft isn’t entitled to immunity.

The case concerns Abdullah Kidd, a convert to Islam who was known as Lavoni Kidd when he played football for the University of Idaho. According to Kidd, in 2003 he was arrested at Dulles International Airport and then shuttled between detention facilities, under the pretense of securing his appearance as a witness at someone else’s trial on visa fraud charges.

Kidd’s arrest was predicated on a false FBI report that Kidd had purchased a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia.

After two weeks of confinement, Kidd was released to his wife’s custody but deprived of his passport and subjected to limitations on his travel. In 2004, a court lifted the restrictions and dismissed Kidd as a material witness. He was never called to testify at the trial at which he was supposed to be a witness.

Kidd argues that Ashcroft adopted and implemented a policy of using material-witness warrants to detain suspected terrorists when probable cause of their wrongdoing was lacking — a policy that led to his arrest on the basis of a false statement.